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Friday 21st October
Pre-Workshop Talk
4.15-6.15pm
Room C1, Pathfoot
ABSTRACT. Alethic pluralism is the idea that propositions, sentences, beliefs and the like can be true in more than one way. The view's most important advocate is unquestionably Crispin Wright, who first introduced it over a decade ago. This paper charts some recent and important changes to Wright's views, arguing that, surprisingly, his current position ends up unstably sharing a central tenet of deflationism. To those of us tempted by pluralism but lacking the deflationist’s taste for barren landscapes, this is not good news. Thus the paper suggests an alternative theory of truth which captures the spirit of Wright's view without incurring its problems.
Chair: Adrian Haddock (Stirling)
Commentator: Allard Tamminga (Groningen)
Although this is not part of the official workshop programme, all are welcome to this event. Afterwards there will be a pre-workshop dinner (free to all workshop delegates) at Chambos in Bridge of Allan.
Saturday 22nd October
10.00-10.45am Tea/coffee
Room C2, Pathfoot
10.45-12.30pm Session 1
Room C1, Pathfoot
ABSTRACT. Mainstream theory of knowledge has been shaped by the traditional project: to provide an analysis of the concept of knowledge, stimulated in large measure by increasingly ingenious Gettier examples. While this project yielded some important theoretical work it has been subjected to criticism from two camps. In one camp are critics who think that while it was right to regard the concept of knowledge as philosophically important, it is futile to try to provide an analysis of knowledge in terms of true belief plus something else. Instead we should recognise that knowledge is conceptually prior to concepts like that of justification which have been invoked in analyses. In the other camp are those who think that knowledge is not as philosophically important as the traditional project supposes, or that it is at least an open question just how important it is. In this paper I argue that we should explore whether light can be shed on the nature of knowledge, and the shape of a theory of knowledge, through reflection on the value that knowledge has for us by contrast with true belief, or justified belief that falls short of knowledge. I sketch a proposal in this direction.
Chair: Rene van Woudenberg (Amsterdam Free)
Commentator: Duncan Pritchard (Stirling) (pdf of handout)
12.30-1.30pm Lunch
Room C2, Pathfoot
1.30-3.15pm Session 2
Room C1, Pathfoot
ABSTRACT. I will be discussing various theses of Kvanvig's book, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, arguing that The Meno Problem can be solved - but that solving that problem does not bring us very far in establishing the value of knowledge. Then I will discuss trivial and valueless knowledge, in order to find out which knowledge has what value, along the way distinguishing a number of values that knowledge may, or may not have, and then concluding that the value of knowledge is external to it.
Chair: Duncan Pritchard (Stirling)
Commentator: Tim Chappell (Dundee) (pdf)
3.15-3.45pm Tea/coffee
Room C2, Pathfoot
3.45-5.30pm Session 3
Room C1, Pathfoot
- Finn Spicer (Bristol)
'The Value of the Concept of Knowledge' (pdf of handout)
ABSTRACT. In this paper I discuss the value of the concept of knowledge (the concept KNOWLEDGE) in two regards. First I briefly ask what is the value (to us as philosophers) of investigating the nature of the concept KNOWLEDGE. Then (in more depth) I ask what is the value (to us as human agents) of possessing the concept KNOWLEDGE, as a route to answering the question as to we have the concept KNOWLEDGE at all. I offer the hypothesis that the concept KNOWLEDGE forms part of our folk psychology: it is one of the repertoire of concepts the possession, development and deployment of which is characteristically mediated by our folk psychological competence. My approach to the question of why we possess a concept of knowledge proceeds from this hypothesis, and proceeds in a teleological fashion - I address the question of why the concept KNOWLEDGE exists in our folk psychology by looking for some distinctive function it serves there. In the course of my investigation, I draw on a distinction between two ways of thinking of folk psychology - folk psychology as science and folk psychology as engineering.
Chair: Sven Bernecker (Manchester)
Commentator: Fillip Buekens (Tilberg)
7pm Workshop Dinner
Stirling Management Centre
Igor Douven
Sunday 23rd October
10.00-10.45am Tea/coffee
Room C2, Pathfoot
10.45-12.30pm Session 4
Room C1, Pathfoot
ABSTRACT. This paper argues, first, that pragmatic considerations similar to those Grice has shown to pertain to assertibility pertain to acceptability, and second, that from this follows something directly relevant to what seems to be the standard conception of our epistemic goal and thereby also for what properties can count as epistemically valuable ones.
Chair: Peter Baumann (Aberdeen)
Commentator: Adrian Haddock (Stirling)
12.30-1.30pm Lunch
Room C2, Pathfoot
1.30-3.15pm Session 5
Room C1, Pathfoot
- Chris Hookway (Sheffield)
'The Value of Knowledge and the Knowledge Inference' (pdf)
ABSTRACT. In my book, Scepticism (Routledge, 1990), I argued that epistemologists should take knowledge sentences with an indirect question complement as primary, and that by identifying a distinctive inferential role which is served by such sentences, we could obtain clues concerning (1) why knowledge is important and (2) what features knowledge states should have. This talk will explain why I now don’t think that this strategy will do as it stands and explore ways in which it can be revised and developed.
Chair: Katherine Hawley (St. Andrews)
Commentator: Alan Millar (Stirling)
3.15-3.45pm Tea/coffee
Room C2, Pathfoot
3.45-5.30pm Session 6
Room C1, Pathfoot
ABSTRACT. This paper is concerned with two questions. First, what does it mean to talk about truth as a value? And second, how seriously - from a meta-normative point of view - should we take this value? After distinguishing two main senses in which truth is a value, it is argued that recent attempts to give either a naturalistic or expressivist account of the value of truth fail. This suggests that our stance towards these values should be, to at least some degree, realist in character. Moreover, reflection on these matters helps reveal the structural relationship between truth and other fundamental values.
Chair: Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews)
Commentator:
Stefaan Cuypers (Leuven)
5.30pm Workshop Close
Postscript to Workshop
Here are some related papers on the topic of Epistemic Value:
- Riggs on the Value Turn in Epistemology (pdf)
- Brogaard on the Value Problem (pdf)
- Brogaard and Smith on Luck and Responsibility (pdf)
- Greco on the Value Problem (pdf)
- Brogaard on Knowledge and Understanding (pdf)
- Brady on the Value Problem (pdf)
- Chappell on Kvanvig (pdf)
- Gerken on Epistemic Normativity (pdf)
- Millar on Disjunctivism and the Value of Knolwedge (pdf)
- Wisdom Bibliography (pdf)
- Pritchard on Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Luck (pdf)
- Abridged Pacific APA Programme 2006 (pdf)
- Roberts & Wood on Intellectual Virtue (pdf)
- Riggs on Kvanvig (pdf)
- Elgin on Kvanvig (pdf)
- Baehr on Virtue and Reliability (pdf)
- Baehr on Character (pdf)
- Baehr on Reliability and Character (pdf)
- Lammenranta on Pyrrhonian Scepticism (pdf)
- Grimm and DePaul on Kvanvig (pdf)
- Millar on Disjunctivism and Scepticism (pdf)
- Feldman on Disagreement (pdf)
- Jones on Doxastic Goods (pdf)
- Kvanvig's Response to Commentators (pdf)
- Ahlstrom on Epistemic Value (pdf)
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